Thirst for knowledge during our lifetime

 

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. 

-Proverbs 1:7

 

 

 

 I've come to realize that while we are living in this world, we shouldn't really stop learning. In fact, we should welcome every little opportunity for us to learn stuff no matter how small it may seem.  We should welcome every moment or every opportunity to hear out wise men and women talk too.

There was a point in my young life where I thought that learning stops when we finish school.  Once you reach the professional stage, the need for learning even becomes more important specially now that we are living in the digital or the information age.  

I usually find myself repeating these words to my kids, "How fortunate for your generation today because you have access to the internet as you have access to all information possible and it is just a matter of Googling them and choosing the right information", and I normally continue, "In our days we have to go to one or two libraries and we had to wait on people to return the books we are looking for before we can do our research and then we have to hurry our research as we have to return the books."

Now, the internet allows us access to multiple websites or platforms that offer online learning.  But the question is which among them which would fit you best?  I've been personally able to try the following online learning platforms:

1> LinkedIn Learning ( previously Lynda.com)

2> O'Reilly

3> Udemy

4> Coursera

5> Youtube (Free tutorials are available)

 

Which among these learning platforms is the best?

So for me, Udemy is the platform that has a balance of content of quality and price but only if you know exactly what you want to learn.  When I knew that wanted to learn AWS, or Java, or want to learn business basics, I bought specific courses from Udemy for less than 20 AUD per subject.  These subjects that you've purchased will be with you for a lifetime and they'd go on sale frequently as well so for example, if you clicked on the banner below now and purchased a course, it is highly likely you'll get them on a discounted price.  The only downsides to this is that once you've finished the courses, there won't be anywhere in the platform to show that you've completed them.  But if you are serious anyways, the only proof you'll ever need is the output you'll be accomplishing in your jobs. 

If you are unsure of what you want to learn, then Lynda.com or now known as LinkedIn Learning is the way to go. For a monthly fee, you'll have access to all the courses in their repository and they have a lot of courses and tutorials.  Once you've finished a course or a tutorial, you are given a certificate which you can showcase in LinkedIn, which is pretty useful if you've built your resume there.  

In Australia though, there is a way how you can gain access to LinkedIn Learning for free and that is to enrol in TAFE.  And if you meet some criteria, you may even study some courses in TAFE, fully subsidized depending on the courses they offer at the time.  For myself, I was able to get this when I enrolled for a 3-week VMWARE course which I got fully subsidized at that time.  With TAFE, you just need to be always on the lookout for these type of opportunities.  You may do so and try clicking on any of the 3 banners below to look for these TAFE courses and trainings in Australia:

And if you are in the engineering and technology field, I think O'Reilly would suite you best.  They have access to all the O'Reilly published books which are technical books and for a regular fee,you'd have access to all of them.  Some of these books, are like more than a 100 USDs if you buy them but you can read them for free as long as your subscription is active. Also, if your subscription is active, you can join live-streamed technical trainings for free.  The sessions though are limited so you have to secure a spot and the times are for the US market so if you are living in Australia, most of these sessions start at 2 or 3 am.  Recently, they have a new feature where they'd give you a sandbox to play with which is very useful for example if you want to practice Docker, Kubernetes, etc.

Coursera is a per course type of a learning platform.  They have this concept they call Nano degrees so let's say I purchase Machine Learning Nano degree, all the subjects that I need to accomplish the course are made available for you to complete. So if you have sufficient funds and you know which course you want, then this is also a good option.

There are so many other learning platforms that I didn't mention here and have no personal experience yet but I do hope the ones here are good enough to help you in your quest for more knowledge and understanding.

 

If you have any inquiries at all, don't hesitate to leave an inquiry on the comments section.

 

Cheers :)

 

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